A few days after the joint meeting of November 6, Lorentz sent another telegram to Einstein, confirming the news [L4]. On November 7, 1919, the Einstein legend began....Thus the birth of the Einstein legend can be pinpointed at November 7, 1919, when the London Times broke the news....From that day until his death, not one single year passed without his name appearing in that paper, often in relation to science, more often in relation to other issues.

Einstein's science and the salesmanship of the press were necessary but not sufficient conditions for the creation of the legend, however. Compare, for example, the case of Einstein with the one and only earlier instance in which a major discovery in physics had created a worldwide sensation under the influence of newspapers. That was the case of Roentgen and the X-rays he discovered in 1895. It was the discovery, not the man, that was at the center of attention. Its value was lasting and it has never been forgotten by the general public, but its newsworthiness went from a peak into a gentle steady decline.

The essence of Einstein's unique position goes deeper and has everything to do, it seems to me, with the stars and with language. A new man appears abruptly, the 'suddenly famous Doctor Einstein.' He carries the message of a new order in the universe. He is a new Moses come down from the mountain to bring the law and a new Joshua controlling the motion of heavenly bodies. He speaks in strange tongues but wise men aver that the stars testify to his veracity. Through the ages, child and adult alike had looked with wonder at stars and light. Speak of such new things as X-rays or atoms and man may be awed. But stars had forever been in his dreams and his myths. Their recurrence manifested an order beyond human control. Irregularities in the skies—comets, eclipses—were omens, mainly of evil. Behold, a new man appears. His mathematical language is sacred yet amenable to transcription into the profane: the fourth dimension, stars are not where they seemed to be but nobody need worry, light has weight, space is warped. He fulfills two profound needs in man, the need to know and the need not to know but to believe. The drama of his emergence is enhanced (though this to me seems secondary) by the coincidence—itself caused largely by the vagaries of war—between the meeting of the joint societies and the first annual remembrance of horrid eventsof the recent past which had caused millions to die, empires to fall, the future to be uncertain. The new man who appears at that time represents order and power. He becomes the Θειοσ ανηρ, the divine man, of the twentieth century.

1913 Spring. Planck and Nernst visit E. in Zurich to sound him out about coming to Berlin. The offer consists of a research position under the aegis of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, a professorship without teaching obligations at the University of Berlin, and the directorship of the (yet to be established) Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. June 12. Planck, Nernst, Rubens, and Warburg formally propose E. for membership in the Prussian Academy in Berlin.